Twitter launches a standalone analytics and engagement app for power users

Twitter has announced a new standalone analytics app aiming to better serve its celebrity and power/marketing users, and — it surely hopes — eke out more activity on its platform in the process by making its highest profile users more effective tweeters.

The standalone app, called Engage, is targeted at a group Twitter euphemistically calls “popular creators”, with the stated aim of helping them “interact with their fans and grow and retain an audience”.

“Twitter Engage reviews all of your videos, GIFs, images, and other Twitter activity, allowing you to efficiently track post-by-post performance and continue the conversation around your content,” it writes in a blog post announcing the app.

Evidently it’s hoping that by connecting celebrities more closely with fans there will be a halo effect whereby some of the good vibes are transferred back to Twitter. Or at least, in the case of marketers, translated into more noise on its platform. Such is Twitter’s ongoing quest for/obsession with its own user growth and engagement.

The Engage app is up for download today for iOS users, albeit only on the US App Store.

It’s clearly now doubling down on the strategy of serving marketers and high profile verified/celebrity users by offering a dedicated, pro tools experience — pushing deeper into the territory of third party social media monitoring apps and services as it does so.

On Engage, Twitter says that “select creators” will also be able to upload and monetize content directly within the app — so that’s presumably limited to a sub-set of users with the largest Twitter follower bases. We’re asking for more details.

The Engage app will also include curated recommendations which Twitter says are aimed at helping identify “high-profile engagement opportunities” — so, in other words, trending content pointers for composing future tweets with an eye on getting a bigger reaction from followers.

The app also supports what Twitter calls “a refined view of influential @mentions and follows” — aka its way of helping power users navigate the signal to noise ratio of their feedback stack.

“The app outlines your account performance and audience, providing a convenient and easy way to see your key Twitter stats (e.g likes, Retweets, @mentions and video views), and filter via different time periods. Go even deeper by accessing audience demographics and a real-time feed of what your fans are Tweeting about now,” Twitter adds.